Stats and estimates indicate 46 million games sold during the Steam Winter Sale

Stats and estimates indicate 46 million games sold during the Steam Winter Sale

12 January 2016

By Miklós Szecsei

Valve is very secretive when it comes to sales figures on Steam. Whenever we get glimpses into what’s been sold on the world’s largest Digital Distribution Platform, they’re very often glimpses based on estimates and third-party stat trackers. This is the case here, but the figures are still very interesting not to mention enormous.

Steam recently held a Winter Sale, during which the platform adopted a more streamlined approach to how they conduct sales. Instead of the “flash sales” on specific game titles we’ve had in the past, all games were discounted an amount throughout the sale. Different titles were highlighted on different days, but there was never a moment when a particular game was discounted more. Some people thought that sucked; others were OK with it. The new approach did, it would seem, boost sales.

According to Steam Spy, a third-party Steam monitoring… thing, 46 million games were sold during the recent Winter Sale. Steam Spy founder Sergey Galyonkin has pulled a number of other details from the recent sale, including a good estimate on revenue generated, and the top 15 titles sold during the sale.

Galyonkin reckons that Steam generated at least $270 million during the sale. Comparing that to the Summer Sale in June last year, it’s twice as much. This can be attributed to a few things: 1) it’s possible Valve’s aforementioned approach to sales made a difference, as people were more inclined to pick up titles knowing that the game they bought wasn’t going to be cheaper a few days later; 2) people are on holiday, it’s the end of the year, they’ve got time to kill and money to burn.

If you’re wondering what the top 15 games were, you can see that below. Smile and wave, Fallout 4 and GTA V!

This time, Valve has actually released some information regarding the sale, but it’s all graphs with no actual amounts. Still, if you want some official word from Valve, it’s a nice read. Find it here.

Important stuff

Contact us

If you'd like to speak to someone about placing an advertisement on this website, email sales@nag.co.za.
Any concerns, complaints, compliments, bug-reports, or general word-speaking with regards to the website can be sent to webmaster@nag.co.za.